GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 94423
ability to have multiple groups of profiles
Last modified: 2008-06-16 20:23:45 UTC
This bug is about the ability to start multiple instances of gnome-terminal each with it own set of profiles. That could be done, for example, by adding a command line option to change the change the gconf prefix (currently hardcoded by the macro CONF_PREFIX). Why would someone need this feature? consider my personal case. I am currently working with fvwm2 custoimzed to start several kinds of xterm to o access multiple kinds of servers (Linux, HPUX, Sun, PC/Cygwin). o to log as a different user (I have access to o to log
Harg!!!! I continue.. o to log as a different user (I have access to half a dozen of functionnal accounts) o to change my HOME directory. For some products we have to log into a specific environment in order to order to disable our personal settings which may interfer with the build process. I very often have more than 15 open terminals in multiple workspaces. Using gnome-terminal with profiles and tabs seems a good idea but it becomes very diffult to handle some much profiles and to find a specific task when I have multiple gnome-terminal. It would be easier if it was possible to have multiple flavours of gnome-terminals each with its own icon, title and set of profiles.
Interesting, but most people already consider the current profiles feature to be too complicated/confusing - I'm having trouble thinking of a user interface for this that wouldn't make it even more scary. Metaprofiles ;-)
You don't need any user interface. A command line option is enough. For example 'gnome-terminal' would launch a gnome-terminal with its settings in apps/gnome-terminal 'gnome-terminal --config foo' would launch a gnome-terminal with its settings in apps/gnome-terminal-foo. Basically, those 2 programs would not share any settings and most users would never know anything about this feature. I can do it today with the current gnome-terminal but I have to recompile multiple versions with different values for CONF_PREFIX. This new option should not be too difficult to implement. I will try to do it myself. I should be able to propose a patch soon.
That have a version of gnome-terminal-2.0.1 with this new feature. I will attach the modified files. This patch adds an option --config=XXX to gnome-terminal. XXX should be composed of letters and digits. The effect is (1) to change the gconf directory to apps/gnome-terminal-XXX. (2) to change the bonobo IID to OAFIID:GNOME_Terminal_Factory_XXX (2) was required to allow multiple configurations to run in parallel but since there is no register bonobo server for this IID I get the following warning: > It appears that you do not have gnome-terminal.server > installed in a valid location. Factory mode disabled.
Created attachment 11294 [details] modified 2.0.1 for --config option
The attachment above is a tar.gz.
A pity this bug has languished - I think it would be a great feature.
Like Havoc said, the current Profiles setup is already too confusing. Any needed features should be added to the profiles settings, instead of the approach suggested in this bug.